


holy ghost fire

by nowavailableinthesky



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: F/F, first time writing spice, hope y'all are suitably and agreeably wrecked by it, only took three months to write lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 04:33:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30049947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowavailableinthesky/pseuds/nowavailableinthesky
Summary: God is silent. Ava is decidedly not.
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 5
Kudos: 77





	holy ghost fire

_thunder rolls and lightning strikes_

_—_ [ _holy ghost fire_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3QrO9bd4pc) _, larkin poe_

  
  


She watches the late afternoon light illuminate the vault of Cat’s Cradle—white light spilling everywhere, large ridged pillars of the nave painted gold. She holds her breath; in perfect silence, she imagines she can hear the psalms sung in centuries past, can make out in the dust motes the ghostly figures of her Sisters, long dead.

Minutes move slowly. Time feels liquid. On any ordinary day it would be a privilege to have even a few spare moments of time to herself. 

But today, today...she’s been here for hours and finally has an answer to give.

A sound, now, those familiar footsteps echoing (in a hurry, always a hurry) as someone makes their way to where she sits at the base of one of the pillars.

“Babe? I—I got your text. Is everything alright?” Ava shifts from foot to foot. Restless, even now. Beatrice is so endeared.

“Ava, I’m fine. I promise.” And...more words really should follow that, she fully intends for them to spill out in a carefully considered order. She’s had hours to discern what it is she must say but now with Ava before her, it’s all gone. There’s only the humming buzz of possibility present whenever they’re together. 

Ava sighs heavily. She plops herself down, limbs all akimbo. She is graceless and graceful, filled with a lack of self-consciousness Beatrice can only aspire to.

“You said...you told me you wanted to be left alone. It’s been three weeks, Beatrice. Was I not supposed to worry?”

So Ava’s hurt. That’s fair.

“Yes. I won’t apologize for asking for that time and space, Ava. I needed it. Some things we can only see clearly when we’re by ourselves.”

Ava swallows hard, looks at the ground. Beatrice continues.

“Listen: For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me. Nothing I ever did was right.” She glances at Ava sidelong. “Can you understand? The world everyone else seemed to occupy was always...one quip, one joke away. A joke I never understood, or else understood too late. But I had faith that the God who made me did so with a reason, so I did my best to be kind, and brave, and strong, and obedient. And for the most part that made up the difference.”

Beatrice sighs. “I believed God had a plan for me right up until the moment I fell in love.” She leans her head back against the pillar, looks up again at all that light. “She was quiet, but with a quick wit once you got to know her. We went for a walk in the woods one afternoon and even though I was the school pariah, she did not hesitate to help me when I slipped and twisted my ankle. She bore my weight the whole way back to the dorms. Didn’t complain once. Didn’t spread any nasty gossip. And in one way more, I fell. I thought, _surely_ a feeling like this can only be holy.”

Ava’s eyes are dark, watching. Beatrice attempts a smile. It falters.

“She did not think the same. She felt quite the opposite, actually, once she realized what I was trying to tell her. And so then: A cold, dark silence where the voice of God used to be. I’d believed the voice of God was calling me to love only to have my heart knocked out from under me. It took years to claw back any semblance of trust in my Creator, many of them spent here in the Order.”

Ava, who’s been anxiously playing with her shoelaces this whole time, gives in to some invisible urge and reaches forward to grasp Beatrice’s hands. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. Low, sincere. “Sorry all that happened to you, I mean. And...I’m really glad you got your faith back. It must’ve meant a lot.”

Beatrice grips back tightly and moves close, voice urgent. 

“That’s the thing, Ava. I’ve been sleepwalking and I’ve known it, for years here in the Order. You, you’ve come into my life like a…” For a moment words fail her. She soldiers on. “A hurricane. A—a patient one. I know that doesn’t make sense. What I mean is…”

She trails off. Absentmindedly she pulls Ava’s hands into her lap and begins playing with her fingers. Lifts one and kisses her knuckles.

“It scares me to think that perhaps God truly did speak to me when I was younger, and that he’s chosen not to any longer. It also scares me to think it could be that it's always been only in my mind, that what I once thought was his voice was simply…me, telling myself what I wanted to hear. And now, now I have seen the dead brought back to life. And I have loved the dead.”

She watches closely, can see the exact moment when Ava’s breath hitches in her chest.

“What I believe in is as open as it’s ever been. God will sort God out; I have that much trust in divinity, at least. And that much trust in the paths of my life, that somehow wherever I go—however I fall—it will all make sense in retrospect.”

She smiles. The light is everywhere, covers them now in the rays that have lit this holy space for ages, and will do so for ages hence.

“What I mean to say, Ava: I’ve been broken in so many ways, and will be broken in many more. And I’m finally alright with that. This is who I am. Do you want me?”

“ _Yes._ ” 

Beatrice lets out a shaky breath. “Good. I want you.”

The words echo around them in the vast and empty cathedral.

  
  


It’s not hard, of course, to put her hands on Ava. She’s not shy about that. It’s easy, it’s exploratory. She’s lived it enough times in her head, imagining the almosts and dark corners one step further, Ava’s breath hitching hot in her ear. It helps that the halo bearer is an open book—always, forever, and helplessly telegraphing her wants and desires. Sometimes Beatrice wonders if she’s aware of the flood of needy sounds that spill from her mouth as she grinds on Beatrice’s thigh, swearing in a dozen languages (“I watched a lot of international soap operas,” she says). 

True bravery is guiding Ava’s hands to herself, letting herself be touched.

When they enter her room Beatrice walks to the window and debates opening it a crack. Is it worth the risk of someone passing by and hearing them given that it’s so very hot already and she can feel Ava’s gaze burning into the back of her neck?

Then she feels a hand gently run down her back, from her shoulders to the base of her spine. She shivers. Decides to leave the window closed.

“If you wanted to be alone with me you just had to ask,” Ava jokes and Beatrice tries, she really does but what comes out in response is far too strangled to be called a laugh. She is buzzing, tense. And Ava knows this, of course she does, of course she can read the suddenly hard lines of Beatrice’s body. And it’s hard not to feel small right now.

So she says, “I’m sorry I’m so nervous,” but even as she says this her body contradicts her, contradicts itself. With her hands she pulls Ava closer. At the same time she turns her head away, closes her eyes. Ava merely holds her, gently rubbing her lower back as they lean their heads against one another. They breathe together.

After long minutes, Beatrice relaxes. She digs her fingers into Ava’s back, turning and burying her nose in Ava’s hair. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. She brushes long locks aside and kisses the shell of Ava’s ear, then the corner of her jaw, then her neck. She visits each of her favorite spots (it’s hard not to classify every inch of Ava as her favorite, though there is a particular deep-seated satisfaction to be had in making Ava make _that_ high-pitched sound), until she’s mumbling and grasping at Beatrice’s shoulders, waist, every bit it’s possible to reach. 

And then—with a hand at a hip, moving down—Ava says, “No, I want to do this for you first, will you let me? Please?” and it is a thrilling kind of grace, the way _yes_ rolls so easily off her tongue. So the halo bearer dances them to the bed and Beatrice is giggling, they’re trading quick, soft kisses. Ava shucks her pants and tugs her shirt off, grinning goofily at Beatrice the whole while. It’s that which makes it easy, somehow, to do the same. 

Then once they’re on the bed pressed close, Ava pauses. She seems taken aback, somehow at a loss, frozen over top of Beatrice. 

“Darling, are you all right?"

She buries her face in Beatrice’s neck. When she laughs, her breath is warm on Beatrice’s chest. 

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s. Just a lot right now, because you—you’re so _beautiful_ , Beatrice, and incredible, and badass.” She drops a kiss on Beatrice’s neck. Another further down. Her hands slide to Beatrice’s hips and she pulls them closer together, a solid weight. 

“So I’m—I’m so fucking overwhelmed right now but it’s okay because it’s _you_. You know?”

“I do.” (Ava is both the source and the solution. A window open to the world, and that very world shrunk down into one person. Beatrice thinks she herself might be all of this for her, too.)

But now, now—

“It’s you. I’m so glad it’s you.”

Beatrice sinks into the bed, grips the sheets. Her thoughts have begun to fragment, glittering, bright. Half her soul has left her body already. Half has never, ever felt more present than right now. There’s a tongue on her breast, there’s wet warmth tugging her nipple—and then there are fingernails gently scraping down her ribcage, and it all goes staccato

  * when Ava dips low, one second her lips on the curve of Beatrice’s stomach, soft swell of fat rounding down into thick hair—the next her lips pressed to Beatrice’s inner thigh (the right one, to be specific, and god why is she cataloging this moment right now)
  * (why wouldn’t she, though, really? this is—)
  * (she is—)
  * (she wants to remember this for the rest of her life)
  * and Ava hitches Beatrice’s leg over her shoulder, wraps an arm around and up to put her hand on Beatrice’s stomach, palm flat and Beatrice can feel the heat of every finger _pressing_ —
  * firm, holding her steady—
  * then Ava’s lips are gone and instead she’s looking at Beatrice, at a part of her no one else has ever seen in this manner, and Beatrice knows how she must look right now, it feels...almost greedy, just a bit, to _want_ Ava to see her like this
  * (like how?)
  * ( _open_ , aroused, and so so wet)
  * her hips jump and Ava’s eyes flick up, meet hers, her own nervousness reflected. then Ava grins, small and so, so loving before looking down again and _oh_ , Beatrice feels fingers softly tracing where thigh (the left one—oh damnit Beatrice) meets groin, moving through coarse hair to wet skin, dipping and pressing deep
  * (... _fuck_ )
  * inside her, over and over, Ava’s lips on her skin and other hand working clumsy magic between them, their giggling breaths and whispered words a series of disconnects and trying again and again as together they create a moment that is, more than anything, only the beginning, static racing over her as she smiles into Ava’s lips, sweat sliding between them, strange noises a delight in the air and
  * then her whole
  * body
  * _jerks_
  * and she is flung into a tiny supernova happening under her skin, everywhere everywhere at once. It’s too much. It’s too mu—



When she settles into her body again she finds Ava propped up on an elbow beside her, looking flushed and very pleased with herself. Then she just looks surprised because Beatrice is crowding into her space and pressing sloppy kisses to Ava’s lips, still too boneless to do anything else yet feeling an overwhelming need to say—

— _thank you, I love you, that was perfectly imperfect, so very good, you make me feel good and you make me_ ** _feel_** _, who knows if I still believe in God after all that has happened since we met but I know more than anything else that I believe in you_ —

She at last collapses onto Ava, pushing herself as close as she can get, chest suffused with warmth. She butts her head against Ava’s chin and Ava giggles. (Is the heat she feels as a result a simple matter of transference? Or is it because her beloved has laughed?)

(...That’s quite a word, isn’t it? Both command and request. I implore you: Be loved.)

Bea runs her fingers lightly over Ava’s shoulder, down the soft skin beneath her collarbone. Ava takes a breath and shifts, barely noticeable. 

“Oh,” Beatrice says softly, and continues conducting her experiments.

“You gotta stop that, Bea.”

“Do you want me to?”

“ _Hell_ no.”

Beatrice sweetly kisses the tip of Ava’s nose. Abruptly she sits up and swings a leg over her lover’s hips. Hands braced, she leans down, down, down, breasts brushing Ava’s chest. Lips descending. 

“Then let me show you what I’ve learned.”

**Author's Note:**

> ah, been a while since I've posted! finally got the brain cells aligned just right to write again. wishing you all patience and a little sweetness this spring, for yourself and from others. 
> 
> -bean


End file.
